Apr 3 : Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing have successfully studied a 40,000-year-old early modern human skeleton unearthed in China and have determined that the “out of Africa” dispersal of modern humans is not as simple as previously thought.

Erik Trinkaus, Professor of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis together with colleagues Hong Shang and others at the IVPP examined the skeleton, recovered in 2003 from the Tianyuan Cave, Zhoukoudian, near Beijing City.

The skeleton dates to 42,000 to 38,500 years ago, making it the oldest securely dated modern human skeleton in China and one of the oldest modern human fossils in eastern Eurasia.

Researchers say the specimen is basically a modern human, but it does have a few archaic characteristics, particularly in the teeth and hand bone.

The morphological pattern implies that a simple spread of modern humans from Africa is unlikely, especially since younger specimens have been found in Eastern Eurasia with similar feature patterns, they say.

According to Trinkaus and Shang, “the discovery promises to provide relevant paleontological data for our understanding of the emergence of modern humans in eastern Asia”.

The research result will be published in the Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences on April 3. (ANI)